TITLE
RAISE regional climate model output
INVESTIGATORS
*Tomonori Sato (Center for climate system research, University of Tokyo)
t_sato@ccsr.u-tokyo.ac. jp
*Fujio Kimura (Graduate school of life and environmental sciences, University of Tsukuba)
fkimura@atm.geo.tsukuba.ac. jp
The following references should be added in the reference list. In addition, when the use
of the data are extensive, it should also be mentioned in the acknowledgement section that
the
data
sets
were
collected
under
the
RAISE
(the
Rangelands
Atmosphere-Hydrosphere-Biosphere Interaction Study Experiment in Northeastern Asia)
project funded by the Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology (CREST)
program of the Japan Science and Technology Agency.
Sato, T., F. Kimura, and A. Kitoh, 2007: Projection of global warming onto regional
precipitation over Mongolia using a regional climate model. J. Hydrol., 333,
144-154, doi:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2006.07.023.
Sato, T. and F. Kimura, 2006: Regional climate simulations to diagnose environmental
changes in Mongolia. Bulletin of the Terrestrial Environment Research Center, Univ.
of Tsukuba, 7, 59-69.
(Available online; http://www.suiri.tsukuba.ac.jp/bulletin/t7/t759.pdf)
MODEL AND EXPERIMENT DESCRIPTION
The Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS; Pielke et al., 1992) is used, which
was further modified at the Terrestrial Environment Research Center, University of Tsukuba
(TERC-RAMS; Sato and Kimura, 2005). The model adopted the nesting domain system, in
which the most area of Asia is covered by a 150 km resolution grid system while only
Mongolian region is covered by a 30 km resolution grid system. The atmospheric part of the
TERC-RAMS, for this database, has 30 vertical layers with stretching thickness. This
dataset contains only 30 km resolution output at the lowest atmospheric layer and
two-dimensional variables such as precipitation. Calculations had been done from March
1994 through February 2003 using the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data (Kalnay et al., 1996) as
a boundary forcing. The 30 km resolution meteorological variables under the global
warming condition were calculated using monthly mean variables during 2071-2080 from
MRICGCM2 (Yukimoto et al., 2001; Kitoh et al., 2005) scenario runs as well as the
NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data. Although the TERC-RAMS adopted the polar-stereographic
projection, this dataset provides the converted data
from 30 km resolution
polar-stereographic grid into 0.39566 degree x 0.26984 degree grids. Time interval of the
dataset is three hour. More detail descriptions on the calculation methods and model
performance appeared in Sato et al. (2006) described as the method-R. Figures on the
seasonal-mean precipitation and temperature changes due to the global warming will be
found in Sato and Kimura (2006). Questions or further requests (variables, intervals, etc.)
should be notified to the above investigators.
DATA FORMAT
All data are archived in the text format, and compressed by gzip. One file contains one
day output data, in which each three-hour data has 90 x 50 grids. After decompression each
file has a name like IYYYYMMDD.3hr, where I is the indicator showing “c” for the present
climate simulation and “w” for the global warming simulation, YYYY is the 4-digit year, MM
is the month, and DD is the day. Northwest corner of the grid data is located at 86.0oE,
40.0oN. Longitude and latitude intervals are 0.39566 degree eastward and 0.26984 degree
southward, respectively. The number of columns is 17 as listed below.
1:time[UTC], 2:lati, 3:long, 4:rain, 5:dsrn, 6:dlrn, 7:usrn, 8:ulrn, 9:shfx, 10:lhfx, 11:sfsm, 12:st,
13:sp, 14:su, 15:sv, 16:sq, 17:soit,
where
lati, ! Latitude [degree]
long, ! Longitude [degree]
rain, ! 1-hour precipitation [mm h-1]
dsrn, ! Downward short wave radiation [W m-2]
dlrn, ! Downward long wave radiation [W m-2]
usrn, ! Upward short wave radiation [W m-2]
ulrn, ! Upward long wave radiation [W m-2]
shfx, ! Sensible heat flux [W m-2]
lhfx, ! Latent heat flux [W m-2]
sfsm, ! Volumetric soil water content x 0.42 [0-0.42] *1
st, ! Air Temperature at 52.5m [K]
sp, ! Air Pressure at 52.5m [hPa]
su, ! X-component of wind at 52.5m [m sec-1] *2
sv, ! Y-component of wind at 52.5m [m sec-1]
sq, ! Specific Humidity at 52.5m [g kg-1]
soit, ! Soil surface potential temperature [K] *3
*1
Division by 0.0042 provides the volumetric soil water content in %.
*2
Wind speed can be computed by
*3
su 2  sv 2
Note that potential temperature not temperature. The surface temperature [K] can be obtained by
soit  sp /1013
 R / c p  , where cp=1004 [J K-1kg-1] and R=287 [J K-1 kg-1]
References
Kalnay, E., Kanamitsu, M., Kistler, R., Collins, W., Deaven, D., Gandin, L., Iredell, M.,
Saha, S., White, G., Woollen, J., Zhu, Y., Leetmaa, A., Reynolds, B., Chelliah, M.,
Ebisuzaki, W., Higgins, W., Janowiak, J., Mo, K.C., Ropelewski, C., Wang, J., Jenne,
R., Joseph, D., 1996: The NCEP/NCAR 40-year reanalysis project. Bull. Am.
Meteorol. Soc., 77, 437–472.
Kitoh, A., Hosaka, M., Adachi, Y., Kamiguchi, K., 2005. Future projections of precipitation
characteristics in East Asia simulated by the MRI CGCM2. Adv. Atmos. Sci., 22,
467–478.
Pielke, R. A., and Coauthors, 1992: A comprehensive meteorological modeling
system—RAMS. Meteor. Atmos. Phys., 49, 69–91.
Sato, T. and F. Kimura, 2005: Diurnal cycle of convective instability around the central
mountains in Japan during the warm season. J. Atmos. Sci., 62, 1626-1636.
Sato, T. and F. Kimura, 2006: Regional climate simulations to diagnose environmental
changes in Mongolia. Bulletin of the Terrestrial Environment Research Center, Univ.
of Tsukuba, 7, 59-69.
Sato, T., F. Kimura, and A. Kitoh, 2007: Projection of global warming onto regional
precipitation over Mongolia using a regional climate model. J. Hydrol., 333, 144-154,
doi:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2006.07.023.
Yukimoto, S., Noda, A., Kitoh, A., Sugi, M., Kitamura, Y., Hosaka, M., Shibata, K., Maeda,
S., Uchiyama, T., 2001. The new Meteorological Research Institute coupled GCM
(MRI-CGCM2) – model climate and variability. Pap. Meteorol. Geophys., 51, 47–88.